When a social group grows from 180 to 430 members in one year you know something's right. And opportunities for Toronto poz gay guys to mix and mingle are growing further, says OutNPoz chair Scott Nickerson in this interview with Bob Leahy

Bob Leahy: Thanks for talking to PositiveLite.com, Scott. I’ve wanted to meet you for ages but we’ve always just missed each other. Anyway, I want to start by asking the obvious question: what is the need that OutNPoz is filling?
Scott Nickerson: Well, one of the concerns we have is that people living with HIV have become “clientized” – there are all kinds of services available through AIDS Service Organizations and such – but there is no one who focuses on the social aspect. We h

Hoo boy – this is going to be fun to write. I say that because I’m writing on a rather personal topic, and I know for a fact that close friends and a colleague have this link. So… enjoy this one, friends!
On June 9, 2014, I received my HIV diagnosis. From that day forward, I have been single and I have been abstinent. Both of these things have been choices I’ve made for my own well-being and at first, the abstinence decision was made from a place of fear – fear of infecting someon

No condoms, no PrEP. Poppy Morgan on her latest efforts to conceive with her HIV-positive husband. “There have been a few times when the thought crossed my mind..."What if I got HIV from him?" It’s weird when that happens.”

I ovulated last week and we had condom-less sex in hopes of conceiving. We've done this before, but this time it was different.
This time, I wasn't on PrEP!
It has taken us years to get to this point, and we both felt very comfortable with this decision. The last time I thought I could go through with condom-less sex, it ended up that I couldn't. As I mentioned before, I am starting to trust the science about how low my risk is because he has an undetectable viral load.
Of course, I gotta

I’ve known my rabbi, Rabbi Ben, now for five years. He’s a little older than I am. A petit man, short buzzed grey hair with a small frame. Religiously he’s conservative and socially liberal. Like, be gay, but just be gay with a with nice Jewish boy.
When I first met him I’d have to visit him once a month while I was on my path to conversion. I’d always feel awkward with him. He’s super nice and a smart guy. I’ll chalk it up to the “rabbi effect.” My friend’s husband is lik

David Phillips says “January 4 marked for me one-third of a century living with HIV”; it’s time to ponder on how we communicate risk and for the active non condom using negative man “how long it is before his “luck runs out.”

I mused for several months that I would throw myself a big party on January 4, 2016. In reality, I was spent by 4pm despite it being a “work from home” day. My husband lured me from home to meet at our favorite neighborhood restaurant at 5:30pm for a quick bite at the bar. I walked our dog Chuck and was asleep by 9pm, in order to rise the next morning at 5am for the gym before a day in the office.
The autobiographical musical production being staged in my mind struggled with the lyrics

Toronto’s Rodney Rousseau with the story of how he came out gay and poz.

OurSpace is a collective of young gay, bi, and queer men in Toronto who seek to support, develop and build our community.
As part of a recent campaign by OurSpace, 30 young men shared their stories. My story of coming out is one of the 30, and you can find it below. Read all 30 stories at thisisourspace.ca.
******
I grew up in the bush. Nobody around. People weren’t gay in real life. TV, that’s where those people were. Who was I? What was I?
Dad was dying. Mouth cancer. Why was

On a trip to San Francisco in 1994, New Yorker Felix Garmendia visits “The Church of Phallic Worship and Orgasm”.

Adult Content
Place: San Francisco
Year: 1994
Destination: “The Church”
Attire: Leather (I know, not very holy of me.)
It was a Friday night in San Francisco, the temperature was balmy, the city was vibrating with adventure and I was enjoying every second of it.
It was my second time in San Francisco, and I was glad to be back. San Francisco will always have a special place in my heart, it was like a friend of mine once said, “Gay Disneyland”.
After going shopping at the leath

The irrepressible Brian Finch took a year off sex. Now he says "getting laid is great, I really should do it more often and not wait a year."

Adult language
I have taken my own sexual smite - Hebrew for the seventh year sabbatical of farming in Israel. In this case I’ve been the barren field for probably little more than a year. But recently I decided that maybe it was time to end this self-imposed exile from the land of cock.
Technically I broke this year of no sex (I never thought I’d ever be able to make that claim) with this guy I used to see off and on. It seemed easy enough - just send a message and in a couple of ho

Felix Garmendia says “We have all been confronted with the issue of when or even if to have sex again after testing HIV positive.” Here’s how he dealt with it..

I tested positive in the 80s, the dark ages of AIDS. I got tested in order to give my then boyfriend a Christmas present, a negative result. I was in an open relationship then.
The news froze my libido for a while - the fear of the news, the way it was delivered on the phone by a nurse who callously sounded like she was telling me that I had a simple cold instead of a serious threat to my life. It was received while I was decorating our Christmas tree on the afternoon of December 19th 1989.

FS Magazine surveyed 3,141 gay and bisexual men. 44% of HIV-negative men would not have sex with an openly HIV-positive man. Up to 49% did not know what HIV-undetectable means. Did knowing change their mind?

This is an excerpt pf an article by Ian Howley @ianhowley and Stuart Haggas @getstuart that first appeared in FS Magazine, a publication of GMFA, here.
More results from the UK’s Big Gay Sex Survey
44% of HIV-negative men would not have sex with an openly HIV-positive man.
Up to 49% did not know what HIV-undetectable means.
31% did not know what PrEP is
When we explained what PrEP is, 71% of gay men said they would use it.
51% were worried about becoming HIV-positive.
Of t

What do we know about the kinds of sex HIV-positive gay men are having? The UK FS Magazine’s “Big Gay Sex Survey” provides some of the answers.

This article by Ian Howley @ianhowley first appeared in the UJ’s FS Magazine, a publication of GMFA, here.
Most HIV-positive gay men will tell you living with HIV can be frustrating at times, not because of the condition but because of other people’s attitudes. In our ‘Big Gay Sex Survey’, out of the 3,141 men who took part 9% said they were living with HIV. So we looked at the sex lives of the men who know they have HIV to see the differences, if any, between HIV-positive men and

Safari Time finds our beloved T.C. Pomeroy admitting he’s not getting much. “Intimacy and touch are lovely and while I’m hoping that I have some mind-blowing ass fucking, top or bottom, it’s not gonna kill me if I don’t.”

I laughed out loud when I read the email from PositiveLite.com editor Bob Leahy asking if I’d be interested in writing a sex column. It seemed like Car & Driver asking a man with a donkey to write a column on electric transmissions. Or asking Justin Trudeau to write a self-help book about overcoming the challenges of being severely unattractive and coming from the wrong side of the tracks.
If you’ve read the Sex Diaries before you probably understand my reaction. There’s n

LA Times op-ed piece says “the effort to require condom use in adult films is misdirected — the porn business isn't the hub of AIDS or sexually transmitted diseases.”

Los Angeles voters committed some bad public policy in 2012 when they approved Measure B, which mandated the use of condoms in any adult film shot in the county. Now, state lawmakers are prepared to double down on that misadventure and spread the mandate to all of California.
At first blush, the requirement seems sensible. Who could oppose safe sex? But the effort to require condom use in adult films is misdirected — the porn business isn't the hub of AIDS or sexually transmitted diseases